Assessment, Statistics, and Research

  Scale name: Perceived Conflict between Evolution and Religion (PCoRE) Scale overview: Authors: M. Elizabeth Barnes, K. Supriya, Yi Zheng, Julie A. Roberts, and Sara E. Brownell Response Type: Participants rate each item on a 5-point Likert-type scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.   Subscales with a sample item: There are four subscales as follows:   1. Perceived conflict between evolution and belief in God My belief in God makes it harder to believe that all of life on Earth evolved from ancient microscopic life.   2 . Perceived conflict between evolution and religious teachings The teachings of my religion contradict that all of life on Earth evolved from ancient microscopic life.   3 . Perceived conflict with evolution among religious community My religious community does not believe that all of life on Earth evolved from ancient microscopic life.   4. Perceived conflict between evolution and religious beliefs My personal religious belief

  A z -score tells you the distance of the score from the arithmetic mean of a set of scores that are normally distributed. The z -score represents standard deviation units thus, a z -score of 1 means it is one standard deviation above the mean of the set of scores. A z -score of minus one (-1) means the score is one standard deviation below the mean of the set of scores. The z -scores are often plotted along the x -axis of  a normal distribution, which is sometimes called the bell curve. Use lower case italics when reporting z -scores in APA style. The upper case Z is a different score. You can calculate a  z -score by subtracting a raw score from the mean and dividing by the standard deviation of the set of scores. Example: A raw score on a test = 60. If the mean = 50 and the standard deviation = 10 then (60-50) = 10 and 10 divided by 10 = 1.0. The z score is 1.0, it is one standard deviation above the mean. Most z - scores fall between -3.0 and +3.0 but it is possible to have scor

  Graphic from  Pewresearch 2021 Pew Researchers have a great deal of experience in asking people questions. Formulating a good question for a survey is an important place to begin. However, another lesson from Pew is the additional data they gather. I noticed a large graphic illustrating how people in different groups answered one question. When conducting survey research it is critical to consider what we need to know about the people responding to a question or item to understand the meaning of their response. Consider Pew's survey item with two choices: "most things in society...      Can be pretty clearly divided into good and evil      Are too complicated to be divided into good and evil The graphic shows how different groups responded and allows for comparisons on the two ways to respond. Later, in the article, they compare political affiliations, which in the US means Republican and Democrat. This is worth studying as well. The article is worth reading to learn more ab